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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Yore dumb is showing.

The following post will probably be offensive to idiots, illegals, illiterates, and anyone who feels it necessary or "PC" to coddle them. So if you might belong in one of those categories (don't worry about admitting to the Idiot category--true idiots have no idea of their condition), then please click away and go somewhere else. And without further ado...

Why can't people use the friggin' correct form of "your"? This is not rocket science. "Your" is a pronoun which describes something belonging to you. Your house, your car, your big fat pimple. Your grammar, your education, your whatthehellever you have. "You're"--as indicated by that magical punctuation mark known as an apostrophe--is two words smooshed together, with some letters gone. Those words are "you" and "are". You're kidding me, you're insane, you're invited.

You're invited.

(also, let us not forget "You're in my bubble", which some brilliant mom in town has on the back of her SUV--misspelled as "Your in my bubble", big as shit, to let the whole world know she's illiterate in not just one but two languages)

Which brings me to the cause of this post. Some group calling themselves Literacy Outreach or something similar with the word LITERACY is going around handing out flyers with "YOUR INVITED" plastered in giant letters across the top. Encouraging us all to raise readers.

Uh. *insert Beavis laugh* How 'bout we raise some spellers first? I blame part of this rash of illiteracy on the mishmash of languages and nonEnglish speakers who feel English is just too darn hard to master, so they'll just take a stab at it however sounds right. (like the sign at the front of the neighborhood that read: Yar Sao. I am not making this up! Yar Sao, when said quickly, on a Saturday morning, translates to Yard Sale, in case you're*yore* wondering.) At least one of my kids has tried to tell me it doesn't matter whether you use "your" or "you're". The furious lil texters insist that nobody cares about those things anymore.

Excuse me? I damn well care! I care so much, that here's what I think:

I think if yore ass is dumb enough to go around misusing words like "there, their, they're" and "you're, your"--particularly while claiming to be affiliated with anything educational and/or literate (and yes, this includes the fools making up the flyers for school pictures who think apostrophes belong in plurals--they don't; that's why God created the letter "s"--but that's a whole other rant) then you (ewe? ha!) should be punished. If you can't use the English language properly, then yore not allowed to use it at all. Period. Yore (God, isn't that annoying how I keep f***ing that up?) grounded from English. So go learn (or relearn) another language, or go take a refresher course at yore local college. In the meantime, don't write it or speak it. (Here's where Big Brother would come in handy) Once ewe feel ewe can behave and use it correctly, yore welcome to take a re-English test. Administered at the DMV. Enjoy the hell out of that. Oh, and if you have misworded crap on your car, you'll have to also get a new driver's license. And take that test in English, too.

If you've moved here from another country, and really don't intend to learn English (as only the very most recent rush of immigrants have decided, the last 20 years or so), go the hell back to where it's easy to talk. No, really. I'm not being bitchy. I'm being serious. All the immigrants who came here from Russia and Poland and Nigeria and all over the damn world managed to master English. It's spoken the world over. If you can't get it right, then there might be something wrong with you, not with the rest of the world.

I know. Bitchy. Sorry-it was "one of those days" and it just kept getting worse, and I let my opinions out a bit louder than normal. I understand people mixing up the homophones, and that's fine--just don't do it on a flyer or sign. For God's sake, ask somebody to proofread, already! Otherwise, it feels like putting underwear on the outside of your clothes--old ratty, grayish underwear. Stuff you don't want to "show" everybody, ya know?

I agree completely. In fact, I'm reading a book where your and you're were badly abused in the first three chapters. A published book!

Sadly, it reflects badly on all ebooks, particularly those released by small publishers. Thankfully, this was not one of MY publishers :) One mistake in a ms, okay, I can see that, but three or four? Of the same mistake? Sorry, but you need to run a syntax check. And take a grammar class.

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Piper Denna and Autumn Piper - both authors of women's fiction - team up to deliver industry news, glimpses into the havoc of a writer's mind, book reviews, and our insights on life in general. Hopefully we'll entertain you in the process.

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